Fight Entropy

1) Why does rabies still kill 60,000 people a year? 2) Why OCaml? 3) A "modularity" explanation of the Cambrian explosion 4...

As long as we're on the joint topics of ways to end an abstract and social welfare: "Policies that redistribute income across ge...

Meanwhile, in excellent ways to end an abstract: "[The policy] would also generate a significant welfare gain from the ex-ante stand...

Distinguishing cause from effect using observational data: methods and benchmarks From the abstract: The discovery of causal relation...

1) The Elements of Data Analytic Style (pay-as-you-like pdf, via Eyal ) 2) Kerry Emmanuel on what we currently know about how tropical c...

Jeanet Sinding Bentzen has a new version of her working paper on disasters (mostly earthquakes) and religiosity: Acts of God: Religiosit...

As long-time readers of the blog may have noticed, posting has been a little light the past 12 months. Sol and I are aiming the rectify tha...

Jesse Shapiro* has some excellent slides on giving a good applied micro talk that are both specific enough to be of use for students prepp...

This is a hard problem to answer well, but its certainly an interesting question. Quantifying causal mechanisms to determine how protected...

Halvard Buhaug and numerous coauthors have released a comment titled “ One effect to rule them all? A comment on climate and conflict ” whi...

1) Ivanpah, the largest solar power plant in the US, is finally online 2) The Weight of Rain, or subtlety in data visualization (via Hac...

Ted Miguel gives a TED talk explaining our work on climate and conflict. I've been waiting a month to use that title.

The University of San Francisco's Masters program in International and Development Economics is currently accepting applicants thro...

Amir Jina  and I recently visited William Fisk at LBL who pointed us to his fascinating study: Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effe...

I developed a new course last fall title "Spatial Data and Analysis". Because several people have asked for the material, I've...

Jesse recently posted on our results for the economic and health impact of typhoons in the Philippines .  But in case you're feeling too...

[This is a gues blog post by my coauthor Kyle Meng .] Sol and I just published an article in PNAS in which we reexamine a controversy in ...

The students of the Columbia Sustainable Development Ph.D. program have put out the call for papers for the Fourth Interdisciplinary Ph.D. ...

Kyle and I have a paper out in the Early Edition of PNAS this week: Reconciling disagreement over climate–conflict results in Africa Sol...

Finding old papers on temperature manipulation is turning into a hobby of mine. I actually had to go to the library to dig up this gem. Fro...